


Memories

by StopLookingHere



Series: Fifty Two Levihan Fanfictions in Fifty Two Weeks [26]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Canon Universe, Gen, Gender-Neutral Hange Zoë, implied nanahan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-24
Updated: 2016-07-24
Packaged: 2018-07-26 09:53:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7569631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StopLookingHere/pseuds/StopLookingHere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>26/52: nostalgia</p><p>Hange reflects on the early days of getting into the Survey Corps, of changing the rules and of their greatest invention yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memories

**Author's Note:**

> this literally just took for freaking ever to write, and I can't work out why.

“What was it like before I came around?” Levi asks one night. Hange and him are curled in bed under heavy quilts, the cold night air nipping their noses. His partner sits with their bare back to him, him reading her book about photosynthesis over their shoulder while he massages the knots out.

Hange pauses, setting the book face-down. “Significantly dirtier.”

He sighs. “No, really.”

They roll onto their stomach so he can massage their back better. “Do you want to know how I got here?”

“Yes.”

Hange closes their eyes for a moment, then starts.

* * *

 

“Miss Zoe, this is quite the invention you have here,” Hange’s teacher told them in that gentle voice that they all used when they weren’t sure how to handle a kid.

They ignored the twinge of annoyance at being called a miss, and instead grinned proudly. “It shoots things out.”

The handle would become familiar later, but for now, the 3DMG was only in its beginning stages. Their teacher had taken the prototype equipment from them gently, letting them have it back at the end of the day. It felt like an insult to Hange, who saw it as nothing more than another invention that

Hange’s father treated the prototype differently; instead, he took Hange down to his workbench, where he quietly liked to fiddle with the broken timepieces that people from the town gave him to fix. He sat them down and told them how gears and tension worked, demonstrating it while they finished the prototype. He gave them pieces of chain from the old cuckoo clocks that were broken in their basement, and helped them find a trigger mechanism that was actually functional.

The pair worked like this for days, often consulting a book that Hange’s father made them promise not to ever speak a word about. Inside, it contained diagrams of every kind—from the human body, to the bodies of animals and structures that Hange had never seen, down to the very physics and driving force behind each and every diagram. It was quite obviously a book from the days before the titans, a fabled time that Hange had heard about only through whispers from gossipy kids in the slum streets. This was a book that had unspeakable consequences if they were caught even in possession of it.

Hange pored over each individual page.

This book became their bible, their one last saving grace from the boredom and miseducation in their present schooling. They learned about space and nature, about vast seas of water, about endless dunes of sand.  The new maneuver gear came along at a rapid pace. The day that Hange’s mother caught them buckling straps onto their body in every which way, tangled in strips of leather and string, was the one that finally sparked the nervous energy that let them complete the gear. Whenever Hange wasn’t tinkering with the gear in the basement, they were working on sewing together straps and buckles and making sure they fit snugly, but allowed movement; adding adjustments to the shoulder pads, even a skirt to protect the fine inner gearbox from the elements.

“What will you use this for?” Hange’s father asked them one night over dinner, making his wife perk up from her stew. “I mean, you’ve put so much effort into it, so you ought to use it for something at least.”

Hange replied without hesitation. “I’m going to use it to get into the military.” Their mother spat broth.

“You can’t,” she said vehemently. “Women aren’t allowed, and that’s _dangerous_ , honey. We lose so many soldiers every month for two or three titans. Are you suicidal?”

“No, I’m not suicidal. This project will make it easier to take them out. It’ll give the survey corps purpose again, mama. And I’ll join them, and I’ll defend you guys from the titans. I’m old enough now to choose to join!” Hange replied, slamming their fork down on the table.

Hange’s father shook his head. “What makes you think that they won’t just take your gear and say _no, you’re a lady, a lady can’t fight_?”

“I’m going to be so good that they can’t say no, papa. I’ll be an exception,” they replied. Secretly, they had a different idea. They never said they’d be joining as a woman. No, they much preferred to be nothing at all.

Their father stared at them for a long moment. “Go to your room, Zoe. We’ll talk later.”

They didn’t talk later, actually. While Hange sat in their room eating the now cold stew, the door locked, angry tears behind lids that refused to let them fall, a single sheet of paper slid under the door. On it, in the fancy printed words that only the newspapers and the capital used, were the words “ _youth military application form.”_

Two weeks later, Hange received a letter in the mail with the stamp of the survey corps in red wax. Inside, summons to the inner walls: they wanted the gear prototype after reviewing the diagrams Hange spent all night sketching up, and they demanded they join the training legion as soon as possible. If they, a woman by a stupid trick of fate and society, could find themselves in the top ten recruits, they would have a guaranteed spot in the Survey Corps.

Hange’s mother learnt of this letter by discovering Hange packing a suitcase, the letter on their desk. A carriage would be arriving tomorrow morning. The letter was only slightly late.

“I thought this was all because you hung around your father too much,” was the way that Hange’s mother alerted them of her presence.

“Thought?” Hange prompted, folding their nicest blazer into crisp lines so that they wouldn’t have to iron it. They turned to face their mother, the weary lines of age set deep in her skin as she looked at her daughter with furrowed eyebrows.

“I thought so. I still do a little. I just don’t want to lose my baby,” Hange’s mother admitted. “You’re doing things I’d never dreamed that you’d do, but for some reason, I’m not surprised either.”

The carriage ride was long and uneventful. Hange chose a pair of brown pants and a green blouse to present their prototype to the capitol, and tied their hair up in the usual ponytail. The capitol was made of all polished stone and reminded Hange of the time that their family had gone to the courthouse deep in the district to give records of their taxes.

They were greeted by a balding man with a short beard and eyes that seemed to pierce straight through them.

“My name is Dot Pixis,” he greeted them, holding out a hand for Hange to take. “Head of Survey Corps. And you are?”

“Hange Zoe, sir,” they replied, hopping off the carriage and onto cobbled ground then turning to grab the box containing the prototype off the floor of the carriage.

“Good, you’ve got it with you,” Pixis noted, leading Hange through a pair of heavy wooden door. Together, they made their way through the halls of the Survey Corps headquarters. Some doors were left ajar, showing offices with people displaying the blue and white crest bent over sheets of paper. Pixis led Hange to a large meeting room, where he instructed them to get ready to speak, stating that a meal would some soon as well.

The meeting went somewhat oddly. It was blatantly obvious that nobody in the Survey Corps was used to being addressed by a woman, especially a woman who was significantly younger than the rest of them. Still, everyone agreed to go through training for the new gear, which Hange dubbed “three-dimensional maneuver gear” on the spot. They would produce enough to train the existing corps and the top trainees as a trial run, then if all went well, would begin mass production of the gear.

“You did well,” stated Pixis once they were done. “I’m excited to see what you have in store for us, Hange.”

“I’m excited to see how this works out. I can’t wait to see it in action,” Hange grins triumphantly.

“It’s going to save so many lives if it works,” muses Pixis just as a cart full of food and beverages arrive. He excuses himself, leaving Hange to eat alone.

The food is very good and Hange even treats themselves to a cup of dark wine, finding it to be an acquired taste that pairs better with the cheeses and crusty bread that are on the cart. Halfway through their meal, two corps members poke their heads in the door.

“Is it okay if we keep you company?” An extremely tall blonde man asks. He has calm eyes, like a windless lake. Hange nods, and the two members sit down next to them at the table, helping themselves to a cup of wine and some bread themselves.

“My name is Mike, and this is Nanaba,” he introduces them as he tears into a hunk of bread. “I’ve been here for about seven months, and Nanaba is transitioning from the training corps to here soon, so she’s here too for some reason.”

Hange nearly spits their wine. “Nanaba, how did you get in if you’re a girl?”

The blonde smirks. “I pretended to be a boy, simple. Everyone around me has been cool about it, and Pixis knows anyways, so it doesn’t matter at this point.”

“She’s brilliant in combat too, so that contributed towards it,” Mike adds.

* * *

 

“To be honest, that’s about it,” Hange shifted in the bed again.  “I went through a couple months of training after that, then my squad got killed and I started to actually research titans, then you came along. You know the rest.”

Levi blinks. “Weren’t you and Nanaba really close before I came around?”

Hange blushes. “Yes. I’d rather not elaborate.”

“I can only guess,” Levi mused.


End file.
